"The tabloids?" asked Meg.
Quill, thinking hard, didn't respond. She waited until she heard the click of the front door closing, then said, "Did you notice that Tiffany was wearing those slides with bare feet?"
"You mean her shoes? Yes, but so what?"
"That crackling devil Maria talked about. Close your eyes. Pretend you're tied up in a closet, blindfolded, scared to death. You hear one of the kidnappers come back. Snap-snap. Snap-snap. Bare feet in slides, Meg?"
Meg, who had leaned back and closed her eyes, opened them with a thoughtful expression. "Slides like Linda Longstreet was wearing? Thin, Quill, very thin."
"She's got a motive. According to Carmichael, she's been taking rake-offs from the deliveries. She's got a lot of big strong cousins with vans. All that nervousness makes sense if she's involved with criminal activity."
"So we want to check her out." She waved her hand grandly. "Make a note, Watson."
"You make the note. You're Watson."
"Okay, I will." Meg jotted down L.L. interview? on the notepad with an amiable expression. "Anything else for right now?"
"You know, at first I thought Tiffany might be the one behind all this."
"So did I," Meg agreed. "But did you notice that spa alibi? Pretty good."
"I noticed." She hesitated. "You don't think that Verger staged this thing himself, do you?"
"Why in the name of goodness should he?"
"Anything's possible. Well, let's take a look at what his day was like." She opened the address book at random. "Oh, my!" She closed the book with a gasp, then promptly opened it again.
"What?" Meg demanded.
Quill started to laugh. "He's - er - rating his women!"
"You're kidding! Let me see that!" Quill held it out of reach. Meg got out of her chair, leaned over Quill's shoulder, and shrieked at what she saw.
"It's a separate section from the appointments." Quill gasped, still laughing. "Oh, my. Oh, my. Tiffany was a three-star but he's crossed it out! Oh, ugh!"
Meg shook her head in disgust. "What a jerk." She refilled her coffee cup and sat down again. Quill continued to read, shaking her head. "Good grief, this guy got around. And he didn't even code the names, Meg. I mean, Tiffany's right, the tabloids would pay a - " She bit off her words abruptly.
"What?" Meg demanded. "What?"
Quill closed the appointment book slowly. "Linda Longstreet. She's in here. She is - was - one of Verger's women."
-10-
Luis shook his head. "You don't go down Australian Avenue." He leaned one elbow in a friendly way on the driver's side of the Mercedes.
Quill squinted at him in the sunlight. "Your computer printout says all three addresses are right off Australian," she pointed out. "How do we get to addresses off Australian without going down Australian? Longstreet Catering, Longstreet Hauling and Trucking, and poor Linda Longstreet herself."
"It's a very bad section."
"You mean it's a poor section?" Meg asked. "We haven't seen any poor sections since we came to Palm Beach. What we've seen are a lot of drop-dead gorgeous homes and some terrific landscaping. Even the regular-people type sections, the middle class, have drop-dead gorgeous homes and terrific landscaping, on a much smaller scale, of course."
"You do not know how West Palm Beach came into being? I will tell you. Then you will know not to go down Australian A venue. This man who built Palm Beach... "
"Mr. Flagler," said Meg. "His name's allover the island. The Combers are off Flagler Drive, there used to be a Flagler Hotel, there's a Flagler Inn..."
"Please." Luis held up his hand. "This man built the Royal Poinciana Hotel."
"'There's a lot of Royal Poinciana's, too," Meg said merrily. "There's Royal Poinciana Drive, there's..."
"Shut up, Meg," Quill said. "Go on, Luis."
"Almost a hundred years ago, this man used the sons and daughters of slaves from Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi to build this hotel. The biggest, grandest hotel in the world. All this - " Luis swept his hand in a grand gesture. "This was jungle. Tropical jungles. Snakes, alligators, all these terrible things, the sons and daughters of slaves fight to build this hotel. So, the hotel is built. It is beautiful. But this man thinks, these black people are not so beautiful. I will get them off my island. So. They have built shacks, these Americans around the hotel, and one day this man invites them all to a festival. To thank them, he says, for a job well done. And while all are at this festival, he and his men burn their homes. These workers, they watch the flames and all they own" - he spiraled a finger skyward - "gone.
" `Too bad,' says this man. 'Too, too bad. But I have land for you. Very cheap. Across the Flagler bridge. I will take you there.' "
"Australian?" Meg said.
"The same. These workers, if they are black, if they are African-American, the sons and grandsons of slaves? They must carry a pass to get over the bridge. A worker's pass. And they are not allowed anywhere on this island except for the boss's home."
"Johnson's Civil Rights act took care of that," Meg said.
"Since nineteen sixty-five, it has not been true. Before that, it was true. I found out by browsing the Net." Luis backed away from the Mercedes. "So you are warned."
"Not to go down Australian because it's a ghetto?"
Meg said. "It's the middle of the day. And I've never heard of the Australian A venue ghetto in all the stuff I read and heard about Palm Beach. Phooey."
Meg directed Quill off the Flagler Bridge, down Broadway to Blue Heron Boulevard and then to Australian. The transition from monied homes with beautifully treed lots was abrupt. Not, Quill realized, because the residential districts were poor and ill-kept, but because the zoning boards had clearly fallen prey to business interests. Broadway was filled with decaying, boarded-up buildings with signs faded from the Florida heat and humidity. Earl's Gas Station and Fran's Upholstery and similarly named small businesses would run for entire city blocks. Then the homes, smaller and smaller, but neatly kept, with fenced yards and late model cars in the driveway, would appear for a short stretch, to be replaced by dead and dying commercial property, then reappear again.
The faces of the people on the street were like those of the people in Hemlock Falls - working people, middle-class people. The only difference was the color of their skin.
Traffic in this area was modest, and Quill relaxed behind the wheel. Whoever had laid out West Palm Beach had done a neat, sensible job. It was a grid pattern, with numbered streets running east-west and avenues and boulevards running north-south. The Longstreets lived within a few blocks of one another. Meg, who was navigating, directed Quill to Linda's house first.
The house, like the others around it, was neat and clean. The small yard was enclosed by a chain-link fence. The house itself was concrete blocks covered with stucco and a red tile roof, architecture ubiquitous to south Florida. Next door, outside a small stucco house painted aquamarine blue, an elderly black man hoed his garden. He stopped and leaned on his hoe when the Mercedes came to a halt at the curb.
A nondescript tan dog lay under the shade of an orange tree in Linda's yard, and when Meg and Quill approached the gate, got up, tongue lolling in the heat, head down, tail wagging. Quill reached over the fence and patted its head.
"It doesn't look like anyone's home," Quill said.
"You lookin' for Miz Longstreet?" the elderly man called. "She'd be at her brother's today. Two blocks over."
"Thanks," Quill said. Longstreet Catering was housed in a small, cheap Morton building with aluminum sides and a low pitched roof. A house trailer sat in front. Children's toys were scattered around the steps. Two plastic, webbed lounge chairs had been placed near a small, inflatable pool. One was occupied by a large, bare-chested man in his early thirties. He had a beer can in one hand, a cigarette in the other. A small, tow-headed boy played in the plastic pool. He was naked, probably about three years old, and he splashed merrily in the sunshine.
The occupant of
the second lawn chair was Linda Longstreet.
"You have any idea at all how to approach this with her?" Meg asked in a low voice. "Do you suppose that's her husband? Or her boyfriend? How do we talk about her affair with Taylor in front of him?"
"It wasn't an affair," Quill said. "He - um - encountered her twice, once in the patisserie kitchen and once in the bread closet."
Meg sighed. Quill pulled the car up to the curb. Linda jumped up from the chair, raised her hand, shading her eyes. She was wearing a blue-checked, short-sleeved shirt and a pair of cutoffs. Her feet were bare. She was visibly relaxed when Meg and Quill got out of the car.
"Welcome," she said as they walked up. "Isn't that Mrs. Taylor's car? For a moment, I thought it was her, but it's you come to call. Isn't it awful about Mr. Taylor? We heard about it on the news. We saw you on the news, too. All about how you both are really detectives from New York? And not cooks at all."
"I'm a cook," Meg said indignantly.
"I'm an innkeeper." Quill added. "We're not genuine detectives, you know. Amateurs."
"It's just a thrill to meet you," Linda said. "Just a thrill."
Quill, who wanted to point out that she had met them before, said, "May we talk to you a moment?"
"Me? Sure. This man here? My brother, Curtis. Curtis. This is Margaret and Sarah Quilliam. You both want to sit down?" She turned to her brother. "Curtis, you bring folding chairs from the back. And can I get you ice tea? A Coke?"
Quill was forcibly reminded that if you peeled away the resort and vacation atmosphere, Florida was a Southern state, and this was Southern-style hospitality. Curtis brought two rusting lawn chairs from behind the trailer and opened them onto the lawn with a grunt. Quill pulled her chair a little closer to Meg's and sat down. Meg went over to the plastic pool and knelt down in front of the little boy, who stopped splashing and regarded her with an unsmiling, direct blue gaze.
"You sure I can't get you ice tea?"
It was hot. Quill was thirsty. Southern ice tea was always heavily sugared. Besides, Nero Wolfe had a strict rule about breaking bread (and, Quill assumed by extension, drinking tea iced or otherwise) with potential murderers. Quill reflected that here, on home ground, Linda was more relaxed, less jittery. If she had something to drink with her, she might relax even more. Even the way she spoke - while as rushed and disconnected as her speech at her offices - was less defensive. Less servile. And she certainly didn't appear to be guilty of anything - either overbilling or kidnapping.
"I'd love some," Quill said.
Linda darted up the steps to the trailer, knocking over a scraggy pot of geraniums as she went. Curtis settled back into his lawn chair, drained his beer, and burped.
He crumpled the beer can with one hand and threw it on the grass.
"And whose little boy are you?" Meg asked the child.
"Curtis," Curtis called. "C'mere."
Curtis (Junior?) stuck his thumb in his mouth and regarded his father balefully.
"C'mere, I told you."
Curtis shook his head.
"You want me to come and get you?"
Curtis took his thumb from his mouth, grinned, and then yelled, "Yaaahhh!"
"I'm comin' to get you," Curtis Senior threatened genially.
Curtis the younger squealed. His father got up from his lawn chair with another grunt, walked heavily to the pool, his stomach jiggling, and picked up the little boy. "Time for his nap," he said to the air over Quill's head. He carried his son up the steps, standing well aside as Linda came out the door with a metal tray, a pitcher, and three glasses. "You don't spill that, Lin," he warned. He went into the trailer, banging the screen door shut behind him.
Linda set the tray on the grass and poured the tea. Meg came back from the pool and sat next to Quill. "So," Linda said. "You both were right there, last night? In the mansion? I've heard it's plain beautiful."
"It's out of the ordinary," Quill said carefully. "Linda - we came across some information that we'd like to check. Do you mind if we talk about it a bit?"
"Well," she said, with some return of her old manner, "I can't say that I'm all that sorry he's been kidnapped. If you'll excuse me for being rude. He was a bad man. Now, I hope nothing awful's happened to him, but honestly, it doesn't bother me a bit if he's scared a little somewhere. But I guess I'll help if I can."
"The - ah - first little problem is one of the inventory. Franklin Carmichael implied that - "
The sound of Curtis Junior's giggle floated through the air. Quill heard his father chuckle in response.
"He's a great kid," Linda said proudly. "I'm sorry, you were saying?"
"Carmichael thought there were discrepancies in the inventory. That you and your brother conspired to fill the shelves at the institute with overpriced, unnecessary goods."
"You found out about that?" Linda's eyes filled with tears. The effect on Quill was sudden and unsettling. "We had permission. Mr. Taylor gave us permission."
"I don't understand," Quill said gently.
"You okay out here, Lin?" Curtis came out of the trailer..'Hey. You crying or what? You two upsetting my sister?"
Quill took a deep breath. "It's about the inventory at the institute, Mr. Longstreet."
"So?" His eyes darkened. "Oh. I get it. That son- um-bitch disappears and now he's gonna try to get back those payments? You tell him he can stuff it."
"I can't tell him anything, Mr. Longstreet," Quill said quietly. "Verger Taylor's either been kidnapped, murdered, or both."
"Far as I'm concerned, that bastard's better off at the bottom of the Okeechobee. You two get out of here. You, Lin. Get in the house."
"I'm all right, Curtis." Linda pulled the tail of her shirt out of her shorts and wiped her eyes. "I knew it was all going to come out anyway." Tears fell faster down her face.
"All what?" Quill asked.
Meg nudged her with her toe. "Linda, can I sort of summarize what I think happened?" Linda nodded miserably. "Verger Taylor forced you, didn't he?"
"Not forced," said Linda. "It was my fault. I should know what men are like. I do know what men are like. Things just got kind of out of hand and, you know, you just sort of give up."
Quill found it hard to breathe. She clenched her hands and dug her fingernails into her palms.
"I told Curtis. He said, you can't fight the big bosses. But he wanted me to quit my job. Couldn't afford to quit. The pay was great. So Curtis went to talk to him. Mr. Taylor, I mean. He was going to punch him out."
Linda smiled through her tears. "Anyhow, Mr. Taylor said he was sorry. Mistook the matter, which he very well could have, I mean, he and that Mrs. Taylor fight like cats and dogs in public. Who knows what rich people like that do in their bedrooms? So he could have mistaken the matter. So he joked about it, really. Said to Curtis, looks like I have to pay a fine. Say, twenty thousand dollars. But he didn't want to embarrass me, so he said, you just take it out of inventory over the next year. I know the auditors. I'll fix it. Then, Mr. Carmichael found out about the inventory overcharges, and Mr. Taylor hadn't fixed things at all. I couldn't tell Mr. Carmichael it was an honest deal. That Mr. Taylor wanted to keep my name out of it, because he was sorry that he mistook me. So I lost my job after all." The tears came again, in a flood.
Meg, her face tight with rage, put her hand on Linda's arm. "Keep your name out of it?" she said, her voice shaking. "That bastard was keeping his own nose clean and set - "
Quill, her voice sharp, said, "Leave it, Meg." She rose from the lawn chair and shook Curtis's hand. "I doubt very much you'll hear any more of this, Mr. Longstreet. I'm sorry to have troubled you both. Linda? You take care of yourself." She wished she could tell her. She wished she could say, It's not your fault. You should have had Taylor arrested. You should...
You should have been born rich.
-11-
They drove back to the Combers Beach Club in silence and sat on the porch again. Quill drank iced tea without sugar and leafed through Taylor's appoi
ntment book.
"Turn to the week before he disappeared," Meg said. Quill turned to the start of the book for the January entries. It appeared as though Verger's aggression, when not directed toward helpless female employees, was directed toward his career. His days were filled with appointments, usually beginning at seven in the morning and ending well after midnight. Daily meetings had been scheduled through February; the frequency of appointments dropped off in March, but he'd scheduled himself well into the fourth quarter of the year. "Look at all the society entries. He's rated those with exclamation points. The yachting meet with the Lantanas has four, the Red Cross Ball has one, then three more were added in a different color ink because the First Lady's apparently coming. For God's sake, Meg, he even penciled in his appearance at our condo the night we got here! Look: 'eight forty-five, C. E.' - that must be Corrigan and Evan - 'at C.B.C.' - Comber Beach Club."
Death Dines Out Page 15
